by Eva Nour
Sami sat dead still in the blue light. To his shock, Ahmed collapsed on to the basement floor and wept.
Issa, who minded the fax machine, had his head in his hands. His aunt wasn’t answering her phone. She lived in the town with her two sons, his cousins.
‘Maybe they fled,’ he mumbled. ‘Or were arrested. If they were arrested, there’s still a chance.’
Later on, a returning soldier told them the takeover had been smooth. They had lists of people to arrest but were told to bring in more. The names went on and on, page after page. On TV, they said about one hundred and seventy people had been killed – it was probably more, said the returning soldier. Because he had seen the army load dead bodies on to trucks and remove them.
Sami closed his eyes and the sound of the TV turned into a distant buzzing. He and Ahmed and Rafat had followed orders and in that moment crossed a line. And it was just the beginning. There would be new orders. They would draw new maps. Every time he reached a line in the sand, there would be another one beyond it, and when that was crossed, another. It would never end. It would continue for ever, until nothing human and decent remained in him.
How much remained in him now? He had drawn the map. Beyond this line there was no turning back. The bunker walls closed around him, numbing in their colourlessness.
III
* * *
There is a picture of the little boy in the penguin jumper. In another, he’s wearing a camouflage uniform and cradling a rifle in his arms, squinting at the sun, his boots resting in the tall grass. The pictures blend together and drift apart. I try to make them co-exist in my mind, understand how they can both be of you.
What would another person have done in your situation? What would I have done?
My writing is becoming an obsession. It breaks free of my computer and becomes part of everything I do, a snake skin I can’t shed. We watch the hundreds of video clips you have filmed. We flip through nearly twenty thousand photographs you have taken, most of them from the siege. We cook your favourite dishes, stuffed vine leaves and lamb-filled zucchini in a saffron stew. We listen to your father’s favourite singer, Umm Kulthum. We study maps and street addresses, read reports on mass executions in the prisons and the composition of sarin gas. The more I think and read and see, the less I understand.
When I see the ad for the Swedish army’s survival course, I think that’s a step closer. I regret my decision before I even get there, but am given a uniform and a green plastic tube of chapstick. Sleep in a steel bed, fire a Kalashnikov and bandage a gunshot wound. Have a hood put over my head and am interrogated with blinding lights in my eyes. I’m surprised at the ease with which I and my fellow prisoners get used to it, how willingly we adapt to the rules of the game before they’re even presented. Forget that you have a body, keep control of your mind. But can a protest live only in the mind without being embodied? How quickly we fall silent when someone else has a gun pressed to their forehead.
An obsession, yes. To understand you and what you’ve been through. And a vague sense of unease which refuses to subside, telling me that no matter what I do, I will never understand.
19
SLEEP PULLED SAMI under. When he awoke for short periods, it lingered like a cold in his throat, a heaviness in his arms and legs, like an apathy towards the things going on around him. Shadows moved back and forth in the doorway. Sound and light blended together, there were unfamiliar voices and dirges, he imagined bridges hovering above his bed.
After three days, Rafat woke him up and said enough already. The brigade general had not given them any new assignments but it wouldn’t be long before they had to go back to drawing maps. The problem was his hands would no longer hold pencils. He kept crumpling up sheets of paper. Lines were erased and blurred. He carried the maps inside him. He folded and unfolded lakes, forests and valleys. Moved cities and villages around. Watched a flame take hold in the paper and eat its way towards the edges, until he himself caught fire and burnt. In his dream, his face and skin were seared until he had no eyes to see with, hands to draw with or heart to feel with.
As day turned into dusk, the black dog appeared. A wild dog. The soldiers loathed them. They roamed the hinterlands and didn’t hesitate to attack if you stepped into their territory. The black dog was mangy, its ribs visible and its breath acrid. Even other dogs disliked it: its right ear had been torn off by a pack that had lain in wait and ambushed it. The soldiers shooed it away with kicks and curses but the black dog continued to visit the military base. It slunk by, panting with hunger.
Then, one evening, it didn’t come. Sami went for a walk in the mild summer night without admitting to himself that he was looking for the dog. There was something about it that reminded him of the mutt his little brother Malik had dragged home when they were younger. The next night, the dog was back and he felt involuntary relief. Sami gave it the remains of his dinner: a bowl of chicken stew to lick clean and a crust of bread to chew. From that day on, the black dog followed him wherever he went.
‘What’s the name of your stinky dog?’ the other soldiers asked.
‘It’s not mine,’ Sami replied.
But he continued to put out bowls of leftovers and, after a while, the dog’s ribs were no longer visible. The dog slept outside at night, except for when it managed to sneak in and lie down outside his room. At first, he scolded it, but then he got used to it, and eventually he looked forward to scratching it behind the ears. The black dog became a reason to wake up in the morning. To gather up his limbs and exist.
After weighing up different scenarios, Sami, Ahmed and Rafat agreed that they would desert if ordered to fire at people. At present, however, it was safer to stay where they were. The revolution had blossomed during the first tentative, passionate spring months, and matured and gained new force over the summer. Then the temperatures fell. An undertone of pine needles and wet soil infused the mountain air and the leaves changed colour. There was no sign of the revolt cooling off or dying down.
Sami was normally woken up by the dog’s eager scratching at his door, but one early autumn morning he was instead awoken by Rafat sitting down on the edge of his bed.
‘Ahmed’s gone,’ he said and held out a mobile phone.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘Never mind, just look.’
The black dog lumbered into the room and curled up next to the bed, its tail languidly beating the floor. Sami sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, watched the grainy video. Judging from the date, it had been uploaded the day before. When he recognized the face, his legs started bouncing up and down and he pulled a flake of dry skin from his lip.
‘Enough already,’ Ahmed said, looking into the camera, fixedly and slightly wild-eyed. ‘The regime is shooting us, they are killing our sisters and brothers. Peaceful demonstration isn’t enough any more.’
Ahmed held up his military ID and Sami thought about how often he had seen those hands illuminated from below by the drawing table. Long, thin, sinewy fingers, which would not have looked out of place on a musical instrument. It was with those hands, piano hands, violin hands, that he tore up his military ID.
‘I’m no longer fighting for Assad’s army, I’m fighting for the Syrian people. Long live the Free Syrian Army!’
The name was not unknown to them. The armed rebel group, the FSA, had been founded over the summer. It disseminated pictures and videos of deserting soldiers while rumours spread about what had happened to the deserters. Deserting was far worse than being a conscientious objector and almost always led to a bullet in the head or a disappearance.
‘Your lips are going to be a mess if you keep doing that,’ Rafat said.
‘Have you talked to his family?’
‘I can’t get hold of them. People say his parents have been arrested.’
The black dog raised its head from the floor and studied them before lowering it back down and putting a paw across its nose. If Sami had been in a sleep-like st
ate during the past few months, he was wide awake now. Why had Ahmed not warned them? They had talked about everything. Hadn’t they? But Ahmed had made a decision, planned his escape and left on his own. In addition to his disappointment and mounting restlessness, Sami couldn’t help but feel a tiny pang of jealousy. Ahmed had dared to leave.
Although they were not brothers, they had lived so closely together. It made him think of Homs and how much he missed his family. He hadn’t been able to visit since the New Year and asking for leave was pointless. The more soldiers deserted, the more restrictions were introduced. After his infraction with the map, the general had decided Sami would not be given any opportunity to go home. Perhaps he sensed Sami would choose to stay and join the protests, or maybe it was just his way of demonstrating his power.
‘What’s it like in Homs?’ the brigade general had said as he and Sami stood together in the gloom by the drawing table. ‘I’ve heard they’re planning to grow potatoes there.’
Because of the strong turnout over the past year, Homs was called ‘the capital of the revolution’. ‘Growing potatoes’ was code for crushing the resistance and levelling the rebellion. A chill ran down Sami’s spine. It meant complete destruction, and he knew that the same expression had been used before the massacre in Hama.
‘I thought you were familiar with Homs,’ Sami said as neutrally as he could.
‘I am,’ said the general and straightened up. ‘Haven’t I told you I did my training there?’
‘Then you should know how cold the nights get. A pretty unsuitable place for growing potatoes.’
The general snorted and said Sami was never going to be granted leave anyhow.
So he would have to sort it out himself.
Sami went to bed with his uniform on. Instead of sleeping, he lay down and waited for the night to turn into greyish light. He finally sat up in the steel bed, carefully, but it still gave off a squeak. He stiffened, but Rafat’s snoring rose safely from the other side of the room, where he slept on his back with a slightly open mouth. Sami tied his boots and took the backpack he used for leave and sneaked out of the room. Outside the door was the black dog, who drowsily lifted its nose when it saw Sami.
‘Ssh,’ he said and patted the rough fur. ‘Want to join me on a little adventure?’
He handed out a piece of dried meat and the dog waved his tail happily. Not only had it put on some weight, it was even getting a bit round.
The sky was still grey when they began to walk through the base but soon the dusk began to dissolve.
‘Come on, we have to hurry.’
The dog sometimes ran before him, sometimes after him, clearly excited about the excursion. After half an hour the trail began to descend and they were out of sight of the camp. Sami changed clothes in a shrubbery and put his uniform in the backpack. If anyone asked where he was going, he had faked a permit to leave. He would spend one night in the clink for wearing civilian clothing, but in the best-case scenario that would be the worst of it.
The black dog moved playfully up and down the path, then suddenly became quiet. Sami stepped out of the bush in his new clothes, jeans and a woollen sweater over a washed-out T-shirt, and whistled low. No dog in sight. He continued down the path and froze at the sound of an angry growl. Two wild dogs blocked the trail, puffy and with yellow eyes fixed on him. They were smaller than the black dog but long-legged and sinewy, and above all they looked at him with starving eyes.
‘Hey, careful …’
Sami patted his breast pocket for dried meat but realized that it was in the military jacket in the backpack. Instead, he held out his hands and spoke softly.
‘Stay calm, I won’t do you any harm. Good dogs …’
Sami took one step forward and one of the dogs began to bark, white froth foaming in its mouth, and soon the other dog followed. Sami moved back and felt the thorns penetrate his sweater. The dogs barked breathlessly and approached, glaring at him, when he heard a sound beside him. The black dog rushed out of a bush and stood between him and the two wild animals. It took only a few lunges before the wild dogs turned and left, tails between their legs.
Sami breathed out and hugged his rescuer. The black dog panted back, its tongue lolling; if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought it smiled.
‘Now, we’re almost there.’
The vegetation on the last stretch changed from jagged shrubs to trees with orange-brown leaves as if the crowns were in flames. Just before he reached the village, Sami said goodbye to the black dog, and it seemed to understand, turning back and going the same way they had come from.
The village was small and there was a shop that sold mobiles. He just had to wait an hour before it opened. The shop was similar to the ones he used to pass on the way to school, with a similarly short, grey-haired man behind the till and a box of fresh bread next to him. Sami bought two croissants in addition to a cheap phone and a SIM card.
‘Are you from the military base?’ said the man, peering at him.
Sami considered lying but realized it was obvious where he’d come from. Hopefully the man wouldn’t call and tell on him.
‘Yes, I’m on leave,’ he said and handed the man an extra note.
He jumped on the first bus to Homs and called his older brother. The signals echoed and faded away. When Ali finally picked up, it felt like Sami was already there, that he was sitting in the kitchen with his family around him. And Sarah, he was going to call her too and ask her to come over. After the shooting at Clocktower Square, they had only kept brief contact. But seeing each other, face to face, they could talk things over. He would make sure she was well. Tell her that he would soon be out and they could make a fresh start. Finally, he dared to let longing swell in his chest and lungs, like rainwater filling the cracks in dry soil.
‘Hello, are you there?’
But the reply wasn’t what he expected. ‘You can’t just come here,’ his older brother said. ‘Things have changed since your last visit.’
Silence fell, only the low rumbling of the bus engine.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ali went on. ‘Of course I’m happy that you’re coming, but you’d better get off the bus before you reach the city centre.’
‘Why?’ Sami frowned, even though his brother couldn’t see him.
Outside the bus window there was field after field of orchards, the fruit soon to be harvested.
‘Temporary checkpoints are popping up everywhere. I’ll tell you more later. It’s not safe to talk on the phone.’
His older brother gave Sami an address where he would pick him up in what had once been an industrial part of Homs.
For the rest of the journey, Sami tried to collect his thoughts. What had Ali really meant? But when they slowed down and Sami disembarked, he started to understand.
It was like arriving in a foreign country. Dark clouds towered over the rooftops, as if even the sky had descended over the city. Several stores were barred and on their metal shutters were tags and graffiti he hadn’t seen before. The street vendors had disappeared. Instead of the normal commuting traffic, the streets were full of funeral processions. Instead of car-honking, there was the sound of songs, cries and tears that rose and sank like waves. People in mourning clothes gathered in groups that dispersed at the rat-tat-tat of bullets on asphalt.
The fear drained out of Sami when he spotted his brother’s face across the street. Ali ran up to him and gave him a long, hard hug.
‘What’s with the rubber bullets? Seems a bit over the top.’
‘They’re real bullets. Come with me.’
Ali pointed out the snipers and took Sami’s hand, since he wouldn’t have budged otherwise.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ali tried to calm him. ‘They’re mostly to scare the people off gathering in big groups.’
Sami looked over his shoulder and hunched down, his pulse racing. During all his target practice in the army, he himself had never been the target. It was an eerie feeling of being watched, that every
step could be your last.
It was afternoon by the time Sami was finally sitting in his parents’ kitchen, with steam on the windows from all the people in the room. Samira kissed his cheeks and stroked his newly shorn neck. Hiba smiled and moved her youngest over to his lap, took off her slippers and stretched her legs out under the table. The child cooed and grabbed Sami’s thumb. Ali was in a good mood but was moving about the room restlessly, topping up coffee cups and checking the time incessantly. Malik was the only one who seemed reluctant to hug Sami, and afterwards he sat silently on his chair with his arms crossed. He had turned thirteen but his plump cheeks and large puppy eyes made him look younger. Nabil looked across at Malik.
‘Well, I for one am proud to have a soldier in the family.’
‘Two soldiers,’ Hiba said and glanced at Ali, but their older brother shook his head.
‘Not any more. Not ever again.’
‘Like you would have a choice if they called for you.’
‘Please don’t argue,’ Samira said and turned to Sami, stroking his cheek. ‘Now, tell us everything. Have you made any friends? Are they hard on you? What do they give you to eat? You look thinner than before …’
‘Mum.’
They inundated him with questions and Sami tried to answer but it was as though their voices were echoing underneath the surface. He was still short-circuited from the snipers and funeral processions. Being home was like opening a door to the past. All the furniture stood as before, each item had its place. The black leather sofas, the crocheted cloth on the TV, the remote control in its plastic case. On the stairs to the front door stood a plate with leftovers in case one of the neighbourhood’s stray cats passed by.
‘Don’t you drink coffee any more? Maybe you prefer it with sugar these days?’ Samira said and pushed the sugar bowl towards him.